mutual

1. experienced or expressed by each of two or more people or groups about the other; reciprocal: mutual distrust.

2. common to or shared by both or all of two or more parties: a mutual friend; mutual interests.

3. (Insurance) denoting an insurance company, etc, in which the policyholders share the profits and expenses and there are no shareholders

[C15: from Old French mutuel, from Latin mūtuus reciprocal (originally: borrowed); related to mūtāre to change]

mutuality, ˈmutualnessn

ˈmutuallyadv

Usage: The use of mutual to mean common to or shared by two or more parties was formerly considered incorrect, but is now acceptable. Tautologous use of mutual should be avoided: cooperation (not mutual cooperation) between the two countries

mu•tu•al

(ˈmyu tʃu əl)

adj.

1. possessed, experienced, performed, etc., by each of two or more with respect to the other; reciprocal: mutual respect.

2. having the same relation each toward the other: mutual enemies.

3. held in common; shared: mutual interests.

4. pertaining to a form of corporate organization without stockholders, in which members proportionately share profits and losses, expenses, etc.

usage: The earliest (15th century) meaning of mutual is “reciprocal”:Teachers and students sometimes suffer from mutual misunderstanding.By the 16th century mutual had developed the additional sense “held in common, shared”:Their mutual objective is peace.This use is occasionally criticized, on the grounds that the later sense development was somehow wrong.

In considering the Origin of Species, it is quite conceivable that a naturalist, reflecting on the mutual affinities of organic beings, on their embryological relations, their geographical distribution, geological succession, and other such facts, might come to the conclusion that each species had not been independently created, but had descended, like varieties, from other species.

The job had been to make a punitive expedition to a neighbouring island, and, incidentally, to recover the heads of some mutual friends of ours--a white-trader, his white wife and children, and his white clerk.

The barons, or nobles, equally the enemies of the sovereign and the oppressors of the common people, were dreaded and detested by both; till mutual danger and mutual interest effected a union between them fatal to the power of the aristocracy.

Notwithstanding their true interest with respect to the continental nations was really the same, yet by the arts and policy and practices of those nations, their mutual jealousies were perpetually kept inflamed, and for a long series of years they were far more inconvenient and troublesome than they were useful and assisting to each other.

It is also from natural causes that some beings command and others obey, that each may obtain their mutual safety; for a being who is endowed with a mind capable of reflection and forethought is by nature the superior and governor, whereas he whose excellence is merely corporeal is formect to be a slave; whence it follows that the different state of master [1252b] and slave is equally advantageous to both.

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